Time really is the great equalizer, is it not?
1440…
Regardless of our age, race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, occupation, income bracket, marital status, religious or political affiliation, state of health or any other demographic that can be specified, we all have the same 1440 minutes in a day.
How do you spend your time? If you made a list of your favourite things to do and those that you want to learn or try, how would it compare and contrast with what you are, in actual fact, doing?
Lately, I’ve noticed five main themes I could categorize my own time under:
Waiting
What are you waiting for, to fully live your life? To find your ideal partner? Your dream job? To reach your goal weight and attain your perfect body? For a family member, coworker, boss, or anyone else to come around? To change? To fix themselves? For you to finally fix yourself?
Does it ever feel like you’re always waiting for the right time? The perfect time? …as arbitrarily determined by what? Or whom?
Especially if you keep changing the parameters along the way. “Moving the goalposts,” as they say.
Wishing it away
Are you spending the best part of the daylight hours feeling trapped in a job strictly for the paycheque? Are you longing for a family, relationship or work situation to resolve itself, so that you finally have all the answers you need to figure out how to move forward? Are you alone, lonely, crying out for connection, but terrified of opening yourself up to potential heartache …again?
Maybe you’re paralyzed by indecision, confronted by a list of options with only a progressively increasing degree of suckage. When you find yourself in a bit of a pickle, caught up in a loved one’s predicament, or something happens around you that you could not predict or did not foresee ever affecting your grand plan for this life, do you find yourself not just biding your time, but actually willing it to go faster? Do you hyper-focus on the outcome, just to see yourself come out the other side, come what may?
“Wasting” it
There’s a long, long list of ways we can numb out and escape. Endless hours spent scrolling social media. Binge-watching Netflix. Shopping. Eating. Booze and other forms of chemical dependence.
Even too much of a supposed “good” thing. Working. Working out. Personal development. Constant busy-ness. Sleeping, when you’re uninspired to do much else.
But who’s to say what a waste of time is? If you learn something from it, or your body is begging for it, or you genuinely enjoy it…
Only you know your own motivation. So only you can make yourself wrong by judging the hell out of it.
…and then wanting more
What happens when you feel guilty for it, though? For every minute you wait, waste or wish away… someone you love gets older and, ultimately, you have less time with them. How do you make it quality time that really counts?
Time well-spent
Personally, I have a few criteria that I run ideas through when I’m deciding what I choose to say “yes” or “no” to.
- Do I really want to?
- Will it move me forward and help me achieve my goals?
- Will it make me happy? Make me feel how I want to feel? Be fun?
- Will it help me heal and grow into THAT woman I want to become?
- When I feel resistance, what it that really about?
What can you do about it?
As they also say, LIFE happens, and none of us have any control over that agenda. At the risk of sounding trite… today really could be all we have. We just never know.
Non-animal-lovers especially may not get why I’ve turned into such a fanatically crazy dog mom. And for once, at least in this instance. I honestly don’t give a rat’s ass what other people think about me. This silly, sweet 25-pound tank of a fur ball has taught me two incredibly important lessons in this life:
Even when she’s been an asshole the second before and tried to establish herself as the alpha I’m supposed to be, she is my best true experience of unconditional love. And her constant shadow is often a reminder to me to stop… drop what I think I should be doing, just to fill the time… and roll on with really enjoying this life.
To live in the moment.
